26 October 2018 Benji Bay, Grenada
After breakfast, we popped around the corner to Phare Bleu marina to clear in. I was a little nervous about not even trying to clear in yesterday, but they didn’t bat an eyelid, when I said that we’d arrived at 17:00 yesterday, which is outside their normal hours. The customs lady took our forms, but said that we had to wait for the immigration guy to turn up. We were only kept waiting for 30 minutes, so we were soon finished.
The customs lady had enormous, 1 inch long false nails, which were definitely a liability when she was shuffling her paperwork, never mind having to type on her computer. We’ve seen long nails on officials all over the Caribbean - it’s a symbol that they don’t have to do any manual labour. Rather sad, really.
After dropping our documents off at the boat, we carried on to the small dock at Woburn and caught a minibus into St Georges. Our first job was to get a SIM card with internet access. We then wandered around some of the quaint small stores looking for a few bits and pieces. I love St Georges, it’s a bustling little place and so colourful in the bright sunshine, the Carenage is particularly picturesque, with houses built on the steep slopes overlooking the natural harbour.
We had lunch at the lovely Nutmeg restaurant - it’s become a bit of a custom because we’ve been going there for the past 25 years. We normally have one of their excellent rotis, but they’d only just started to peel the potatoes, so we shared a Callalloo Soup and Curried Lambi instead. It’s a great place to sit and chill out, overlooking the colourful fishing boats on the Carenage.
We bought a few provisions in the Food Fair. I love walking around the supermarkets in the Caribbean. There's stuff that you'd never see in a UK supermarket. Today's delight was loose bars of Blue Soap. It's a very old-fashioned block of soap used for laundry. Apparently, it contains ultramarine blue and sodium carbonate for a better wash. It’s supposed to be kinder on hands than laundry detergent and has a mild fragrance to complement cleaning. It's also only £0.35 for a block of it. Glenys is not convinced...
We caught a minibus back to Woburn and, at the dock, I unlocked our stainless steel chain, expecting the dinghy to stay put because it was also tied on with a rope painter. To my shock, our dinghy started to drift away from the dock because the painter was no longer attached to the dinghy! I did a hop, skip and a jump across a local boat and just landed in our dinghy.
After starting the engine and motoring back to the dock, I found that our painter was still tied to the dock, but some idiot had untied the rope from the dinghy. The bowline has been tied on there for a couple of years, so I know that it didn’t work loose by itself. I’m guessing that another cruiser has untied the painter to get his own dinghy out of a tangle - he could have at least tied it back on.
Back at the boat, we grabbed our snorkelling gear and went for a snorkel just off the cliffs on Little Calivigny Point (about 12°00.18N 061°43.72W). It was surprisingly good, with 5 metres of visibility and lots of coral and fish. The reef is covered by a thin layer of sediment, but we saw a few fire worms, lots of feather worms and a few colourful shrimp. Unfortunately, the batteries for my underwater camera haven’t been charged, so no photos, but I’ll have it all ready to go tomorrow.
27 October 2018 Benji Bay, Grenada
In the morning, I dug out my underwater camera and set it all up. After lunch, we went back to the same reef off Little Calivigny Point. We saw a couple of Lionfish and a Peterson Cleaning Shrimp. I also took a nice macro photo of a Magnificent Feather Duster. It’s great to be back snorkelling.
We chilled for the rest of the day.
28 October 2018 Benji Bay, Grenada
We had a fairly quiet Sunday. At lunch time, we went to a bar called Island View (just below Taffy’s bar), where they had specially cooked some spare ribs. It was okay, with a few provisions, but expensive for what we had.
After chilling out in the afternoon, we dinghied over to Hog Island for a few beers at Roger’s bar. The place was bouncing with lots of locals having a good time. There were the usual gaggles of cruisers, who looked like long term mooring residents - no one that we knew or wanted to talk to. It makes me sad to see the large number of moorings in the Hog Island anchorage, all with foreign boats who just doss here.
There are more photos in our Photo Album section.
29 October 2018 Benji Bay to Tyrell Bay, Carriacou
We were planning to go up to the Grand Etang National Park for a hike today and then sail up to Carriacou tomorrow or the next day. However, there’s a Tropical Wave due to arrive tomorrow night, which will bring rain and stronger winds for the rest of the week. After ten minutes of debate, we decided to abandon the hike and sail up to Carriacou today, while the weather is perfect.
It took us 30 minutes to get the boat ready for sea and we left at 08:30. We had a pleasant motor along the south coast to Saline Point and then a cracking sail across St Georges Bay. As usual, when we arrived at Moliniere point, the wind dropped and came from all directions, so we motor sailed up the west coast of the island. It was very calm, so we chilled out reading our books.
Just as we were passing the small town of Gouyave, I noticed that our boat speed had dropped to 2 knots despite the engine running at 1800 rpm - we’d picked up some flotsam. We stopped the engine and drifted while I donned snorkelling gear and went to have a look at what we’d picked up. I was amazed to find a large polystyrene float attached to a long rope leading down into the depths - probably to a large lobster pot.
The rope had missed the propeller, but has snagged around our rudder, so we were towing the whole contraction along. It took a few dives, but I was able to pull the rope away from our rudder and there was no damage done to Alba or the fishing gear. Speaking of fishing, we trailed a line all the way to Carriacou and all we caught was Sargassum Weed, which I had to keep cleaning off every 30 minutes.
To the north-west of Grenada, there’s an active underwater volcano called Kick Em Jenny, which has a 1.5 mile exclusion zone around it. The volcano last erupted in 1973, but there have been a couple of minor earthquakes this year, so we wanted to keep well clear. Unfortunately, Kick Em Jenny is directly on the rhumb line to Carriacou, so we motor-sailed a few more miles upwind along the north west coast of Grenada before we headed offshore.
We had a cracking sail to Ronde Island and then onto Tyrell Bay where we anchored at 12°27.36N 061°29.29W in 5 metres on good holding sand. The bay isn’t as busy as it was in June, but there are still a lot of boats here. Marcus and Margie from “Island Kea II” came over to say hello, so we invited them on board for a few beers.
30 October 2018 Tyrell Bay, Carriacou
It was a bit more blustery in the morning, but still sunny, so we went snorkelling along the headland to the south of the anchorage. We first went to a small wreck in shallow water at about 12° 26.69’N 61° 29.89'W, which was okay. It’s a fairly new wreck, so there’s not much sea life established yet and the area around the wreck is mostly boulders. At least the visibility was good.
On the way back, we picked up a dodgy looking mooring about 50 metres off shore from a large rusting wreck (about 12° 27.077'N 61° 29.668'W). The mooring leads down to a very nice reef with good visibility. Unfortunately, it’s between 6-10 metres deep and a challenge to do photography, so I soon exhausted myself.
The wind picked up in the afternoon, but at least it didn’t rain. We’re glad that we came up in settled weather. We ran the water-maker and chilled out for the rest of the day.
31 October 2018 Tyrell Bay, Carriacou
The tropical wave finally came through in the middle of the night, bringing some heavy rain, but not much wind. After breakfast, we went for a walk to see if we could get to the end of the southern-most peninsula. We dropped our dinghy off at the marina dinghy dock and walked up the very steep access road.
At the top we turned right. Within a few hundred metres, we were out of the houses and into grazing farmland. It’s all fenced off, so we were unable to walk to the edge of the high cliffs overlooking where we were snorkelling yesterday. We came across a place where the fence ended and we were able to turn right to walk across to the west coast line. Unfortunately, the bush was too thick to walk up to the top of the cliffs.
Eventually, we arrived at a beach facing towards Saline Island and walked along through the mangroves, coming across some impressive invasive plants, covering the mangrove trees - lovely colours. The dirt track petered out next to a couple of houses and we weren’t able to get through to the end of the peninsula, but it was nice to get out and stretch our legs.
In the afternoon, we popped over to see “Island Kea”, who are on the hard. They’re deep into work, but had time to dig out some chart books for the Bahamas, which they gave to us. We need to do some serious planning of where we will be able to visit. Our keel is 2 metres deep and a lot of the Bahamas is very shallow water.
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